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09 June, 2008

Intolerancia

Today's smiting of intolerant bastards.

You know, I used to not mind the phrase "In God We Trust" on coinage - seemed ridiculous but harmless, and if it made the "Jesus Wuuuvs Me!" crowd feel all warm and fuzzy, fine. Let them have their jollies. That live-and-let-live attitude died with the rise of the frothing fundies. If there's one thing I've learned about the Jeebus freaks, it's that if you give them a millimeter, they'll take a megaparsec. The outcry over moving their ridiculous, unrepresentative phrase to the edge of the coins rather than the face was nauseating enough, but this means war:

Religious Right leaders and their followers often assert that it’s no big deal when the government endorses religion in a general way. “In God We Trust” appears on our money, and “under God” was slipped into the Pledge of Allegiance. It’s a generic endorsement of religion, so no harm done, right?

Recent events in California indicate that it’s not that simple. Bakersfield City Councilwoman Jacquie Sullivan has started a national campaign to persuade local governments and public schools to post “In God We Trust” signs in a conspicuous place. The drive has sparked a surprising amount of discord.

In Lancaster, Calif., a woman who protested the council’s unanimous vote to post an “In God We Trust” sign had her house vandalized. Debbie Phillips had publicly opposed the move at two open meetings. She woke up May 29 to find the words “In God We Trust or?” scrawled in shoe polish in foot-high letters across two windows and a sliding-glass door.

Or what, you addlepated fuckwits? "In God We Trust or" you'll start a holy war? Maybe revive the good old days of wholesale slaughter for Jesus? Burn heretics at the stake? You yearn for those days, don't you? I think a lot of the theocon outcry over Islamofacism is just envy. They wish they could get away with beheadings, stonings, and murder in the name of God. Instead, they're reduced to whining about persecution because their shout-outs to God are merely deafening rather than eardrum-bursting in this country, and instead of the sword, they have to whip out the shoe polish.

And don't you even fucking begin whining about how that's just an isolated incidence and not at all representative of all religious frothers. You clueless fuckers may be wielding petitions rather than shoe polish, but it's all the same sick fucking mentality. You're so God-blind that you make dumbshit statements such as this:

Sullivan told the San Francisco Chronicle back in 2002 that she can’t understand why some people get upset over her crusade.

“To me, ‘In God We Trust’ is our official national motto, and God is all-inclusive of everyone,” she said.

And can't possibly comprehend viewpoints such as this:

This narrow perspective is all too common among the Religious Right. A moment’s thought should demonstrate that generic endorsements of God do not include Americans who believe in many gods, don’t believe in God at all or define God in a non-traditional way. They are also offensive to some believers who don’t like to see these pathetic attempts to secularize God.

That narrow perspective is fucking dangerous. It's a short step from believing God is all-inclusive of everyone to imposing that idea by legislative fiat and violence. I'll be more than happy to provide overwhelming historical evidence for that claim, should you be stupid enough to debate it, you rabid little assclowns.

Something tells me we should have taken their cutesy little slogans away a long fucking time ago. "In God We Trust" is a relatively recent phenominon, but to hear McLame tell it, it's been on our money since the United States began:

Note to McCain: Not fucking true. None of it. America is not a Christian nation, God doesn't belong in American government, and those stupid "Hey, God, look at us - we're praising you by government decree!" phrases weren't current in this country until the Cold War. Bitch.

Tim Todd explains why private donations for military Bibles are so desperately needed: "Our government no longer provides Bibles for our troops! Because of the foolish 'separation of church and state' battle going on in this country, our military stopped this years ago." This is an outright lie, as evidenced by many recent Department of Defense contracts for the purchase of Bibles. Topping the list of Bible contractors are the International Bible Society, with over $450,000 in DoD contracts for Bibles between 2002 and 2007, and Tammy's Bible and Book Store, with close to $300,000 during this same period. Countless smaller contracts, ranging from a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars, have been awarded to various Christian book dealers and distributors for Bibles and other Christian books.

Todd continues: "However, the U.S. military does give a copy of the Koran to all of our soldiers so they can 'know their enemy.' I say we need to give our soldiers a copy of the Bible so they can 'know their savior!!!'" Here, too, a simple search of DoD contracts is all that's needed to dispute Tim Todd's claim. If Korans were being given to all of our troops, as Todd would have his readers believe, there would be some record of their purchase, but there isn't. There hasn't been a single DoD contract for the purchase of Korans during the so-called war on terror. The only government agency to buy the Koran in bulk has been the Justice Department, for the use of the F.B.I.

What the fuck are my tax dollars doing being used to purchase a surplus of Bibles for soldiers? If you're going to be claiming the troops are Bible-deprived and solicit donations for another metric ton of Bibles for each and every soldier, well fine, fuck it: I want my tax dollars back, and you fucktards can go buy your own damned Bibles for the military. It's not like this appears to be a problem anyway:

If the numbers of Bibles claimed to have been shipped to Iraq by all of the organizations sending them were added up, there have actually been more Bibles shipped than troops deployed. And, in addition to the large number of Bibles purchased by the DoD and those sent to Iraq by private organizations, Bibles are freely distributed to untold thousands of basic trainees by ministries such as Campus Crusade for Christ before they're deployed. In fact, so many groups have been distributing Bibles to our soldiers that Eric Horner Ministries, which hands out camouflage covered New Testaments from the International Bible Society, reported in March 2007: "We recently visited Ft Jackson SC for a concert and gave out around 250 copies of the New Testament with Psalms and Proverbs to our young soldiers. We had hoped to give out more but we learned there had just been a group on base handing them out as well."

And you somehow think that the troops are Bible deprived? Religion really has rotted your brains, hasn't it? It's totally destroyed your ability to recognize even the vaguest outline of reality.

I'm through with even the most innocuous government support of religion, you silly shitheads. You had your chance to get a little bit of God into public life and be satisfied. You won't be happy until we're living in a theocracy. Fine. I withdraw my equanimity, and from henceforth, shall happily demand that government be scrubbed absolutely clean of the lest little hint of God. Even the slightest speck of religion is too much. See my above comment about millimeters and megaparsecs if you want to know why I won't tolerate even a whiff of you anymore.

9 comments:

For some time now, I've been thinking of making a bumper sticker that says "I AM NOT UNDER GOD", and selling it through CafePress or some such.

On a related note, a list of atheist goals might be a good idea, since we're already covering "what we're not" and "how to totally fail to impress us". Some suggestions, culled from this posting and elsewhere:

* No more tax breaks just for being religious; you have to demonstrably be doing good for the community (or whatever the guidelines are for non-religious NPOs).

* "Under God" to be taken back out of the Pledge of Allegiance (and it seems to me that pledging to a flag is a bad idea, too -- how about pledging allegiance to the Constitution, which actually means something?)

* "In God We Trust" not to be used anywhere by the federal government, including money; any ideas for good substitutes? How about "In Ourselves We Trust". Maybe put it in Latin for a generation or two until people get used to it.

* No government dollars to be used for the explicit procurement or printing of religious works, ever. The only legit reason I can think of for needing to actually pay money to have a copy of a religious work might be for studying texts of some of the newer cults (e.g. Scientology) where copyright might be an issue. So maybe we make an exception for works still under copyright -- but there should be a full accounting of such expenditures, along with justification, posted on the web.

Can I nominate semper ubi sub ubi and duit on mon dei as being more appropriate representations of our national character? Or, a bit more relevantly, de gustibus non disputandem est (and I hope I've got that right; I Am Not A Qualified Latinist).

There's a twisted logic to the complaint that atheists are "militant" because we want to remove the mention of religion from government. Somehow, we're imposing our world view on them.

What utter nonsense! When we propose making them disavow their gods is when we're imposing our beliefs on them. (I hope to never see such a day, incidentally.) What we're "imposing" on them is equality with everyone else's beliefs.

@Woozle: A list of goals might be excellent. Especially since a lot of our goals will mesh wonderfully with the strict seperationists' goals. Could be fun to come up with!

I'm not even an unqualified Latinist. Translation?

@Blake: I wish it were enough. I really, really do.

@Efrique: We also talk. That makes us even MORE militant!

@Cujo: Have you ever found any fundamentalist Christian, anywhere, who's capable of explaining why they can't practice their Christianity if the federal, state and local governments aren't cheering them on and displaying their artwork on the fridge? And I'd really love to see how they think we're "imposing" our views when there's nothing imposed - except maybe that little thing Jesus said once about rendering unto Caesar what's his, and keeping God out of it. Buggers.

Sorry. Didn't mean to start spitting there. These people just drive me nuts.

Ah, yes, ye olde "We're special because there's so many of us." Well, they have an interesting way of interpreting the numbers, and I'm sure I can dig out some study somewhere that shows they're actually in the minority. That should be fun! ;-)